The sexcess of the 70s returns to downtown Manhattan with an exhibit in
the Danziger Gallery of work by acclaimed fashion illustrator, Antonio
Lopez. But for the first time, the focus of this show will not be his pen,
ink, and watercolor artworks, but photographs, Instamatics, that Lopez
snapped of the most glamorous influencers of the era.

Just as we document all our pursuits on Instagram, Lopez did so with his
Instamatic camera, although his gratification was somewhat less instant
than ours in that his film needed to be developed by Kodak. However the
results are precursors of our social media image-making (even if the
unapologetic sexiness typical of Lopez’s work is frowned upon by Instagram
which deleted my post of a photo of Grace Jones baring a nipple.) But those
multi-photo collage grids on your favorite accounts? Nothing new as Lopez
demonstrated similar technique over 40 years ago, several years ahead of
the art world’s David Hockney with his “joiners’ series.

Lopez’s “Instamatics” capture the 70s

The leading ladies lured by Lopez’s lens––Jerry Hall, Tina Chow, Paloma
Picasso, Pat Cleveland, and the Graces Coddington and Jones––along with
glittering gentlemen––Karl Lagerfeld, Halston, and even an aging Charles
James––burst sun-kissed from suds and bubbles. Lopez often created a series
of photographs around a theme and in the exhibit his “Blue Water Series” in
which his subjects pose in bathtubs is well-represented. The world upon
which Lopez trained his eye was blistering hot even in the dead of night,
ignited by the sexual liberation and youth of the previous decade, and the
influence of Warhol, and fueled by the intersection of art and fashion, and
the disco decadence of Manhattan’s Studio 54 and Paris’s Club Sept. History
reports that Lopez launched the career of the 17-year-old Texan, Jerry
Hall, who in 1977 became the face of Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium fragrance
which immediately rivaled Chanel No 5 in popularity.

With a documentary entitled “Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion and Disco”
to premier this fall, it is clear that our fascination with this vibrant
Puerto Rican who dominated the milieus of the most fabulous in Paris, NYC,
and LA, but was gone too soon, dying in 1987 at aged 44, knows no bounds.
The exhibit runs until April 28 2018.

Photos by FashionUnited at Antonio Lopez exhibition.

Fashion editor Jackie Mallon is also an educator and author of Silk
for the Feed Dogs, a novel set in the international fashion
industry.